Action at the sixth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium did not stop at the end of each day’s presentations, but carried into the evening hours on Friday, April 27. Three theme dinners allowed additional speakers to present materials on motors, aerodynamics, or energy. Paul Peterson, the founder and CEO of Volta Volare’, introduced the dinner crowd to his Volta Volare’ GT4 high-performance, hybrid aircraft, which joins Pipistrel’s Pantera and John McGinnis’ Synergy in the realm of fast, roomy airplanes that will have operating costs far below those of similar traditional airplanes. When your editor saw news about Peterson’s creation in Popular Science, he asked Dr. Seeley if CAFE could invite him to the EAS, which received an immediate, positive response, and Peterson unveiled his airplane to an appreciative and knowledgeable audience. The GT4 is a four/five seat canard, currently flying and originally designed with a Continental TSIO550 engine in mind, but re-engineered from the firewall aft to house the hybrid EViation …
Living Up To a Standard
Ron Gremban is an early developer of plug-in electric hybrid (PHEV) automobiles, having helped convert hundreds of Toyota Priuses to extend their electric-only range and make them even more practical real-world automobiles. His 2008 writing on the differences between the Prius and Chevrolet’s Volt shows an ability to consider the actual physics and engineering involved rather than allowing the heat of the debate to obscure the realities. Backing from Dr. Andrew Frank of UC Davis gives further credibility to Gremban’s views. Given his demonstrated abilities and his dispassionate vision, it’s no surprise that Gremban would look at projected electric flight in ways that haven’t yet occurred to its most ardent promoters. On April 27, at the Friday evening Motors theme dinner, as part of the Electric Aircraft Symposium hosted by the CAFE Foundation, he shared some of his concerns about potential safety concerns for electrified flight. For instance, how do pilots and know that an electrically-powered propeller is “on” or activated …
Holding All the (Official) Records
If you go to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale web site, you’ll find only three officially ratified ratified records for Sub-Class RAL1E, Electric-powered Microlights with moveable aerodynamic controls. They all belong to Jean Luc Soullier and Luxembourg Spécial Aerotechnics – L.S.A., assisted by fellow members Martin Marschner von Helmreich, Fabrice Tummers and Roman Marcinowski, flying their Colomban MC-30 Luciole (Firefly). The F. A. I. made their February 2 flight achievements official just a few weeks ago. This small group developed the current power system with Electravia, and campaigned the airplane at Sisteron, France for these initial records. They plan on going higher, faster and farther, including a flight across a significant body of water. Jean Luc shared the following with your editor. “My culture is facts, no more no less. As we equipped the aircraft [with a] full set of recorders, positive difference was easy to see between before and after setting wing deturbulators: 20% of gain[ed] energy at constant speed …
AVweb Talks to Dr. Seeley About EAS VI
The sixth annual Electric Electric Aircraft Symposium, CAFE’s premier event, got a lot of press attention this year, including lead story status from AOPA and acknowledgement from Engadget and AVweb. We’ll start with the one that’s most fun to listen to – a podcast from AVweb. Mary Grady of AVweb interviewed Dr. Brien Seeley, President of the CAFE Foundation, about the just completed Electric Aircraft Symposium at Santa Rosa, California, which drew participants from at least eight countries and 10 multi-national corporations. With Federal Aviation Administration representation and a former Environmental Protection Agency head signed up to attend, the Symposium drew some high-level attention this year. Dr. Seeley was enthusiastic about the rapidly maturing technology and industry, with Tom Gunnarson from the FAA and Ronald Gremban of ForSites Corporation working toward standards and practices for electric aircraft. When asked about the thought that FAA rules for small electric aircraft might be five to 10 years out, Dr. Seeley noted the …
IBM’s Battery 500 Project
One of several presenters at this year’s sixth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium held by the CAFE Foundation at Santa Rosa, California on April 27 and 28 this year, Dr. Winfried W. Wilcke, senior, Manager of Nanoscale Science and Technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, initiated and heads up the Battery 500 project, a coalition to create a battery that will give electric cars a 500-mile range. Partners include the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, the Stanford Linear Accelerator National Laboratory, and Stanford University. Asahi Kasei and Central Glass have recently joined the enterprise, chosen for their expertise in battery separator membranes and electrolytes respectively. The Project’s goal is to eliminate range anxiety for EV owners and use the excess capacity of the electrical grid at night for charging. Dr. Wilcke explained that if all U. S. drivers had battery-powered electric cars, 73 percent of those EVs could be recharged at night with excess electricity from the grid. Given …
Oxis Energy and Lithium Sulfur Batteries
Taking one last look at 2011’s fifth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, your editor regrets the fits and starts in its coverage. Next week, we’ll begin looking at the extraordinary presentations from this year’s gathering. Huw W. Hampton-Jones from Oxis Energy, a British company developing a Lithium Sulfur battery, claimed his firm’s “technology is based around the use of Lithium Sulphur to produce batteries which are superior in terms of energy, weight, cycle life, costs, ageing and safety.” Lithium sulfur is well known in military circles for providing primary (non-rechargeable) power to field operations. Perlan I flew with SAFT 5590 primary batteries, partly because of their superior energy density compared to lithium-ion cells, and partly because of their greater resistance to thermal runaways, or self-igniting fires sometimes seen in lithium batteries. Weight was a significant concern on this high-altitude craft. When working on the fringes of the battery selection effort for Perlan II, headed by Einar Enevoldson, James Murray and Eric …
Vimeo Viewing of First Ever Electric Aircraft Charging Station
Dr. Brien Seeley, President of the CAFE Foundation, points us toward a video his son Damon just posted to Vimeo. It depicts part of the 2011 Green Flight Challenge sponsored by Google, for which the Foundation played host. Dr. Seeley explains, “NASA’s Chief Technologist Joe Parrish refers to the Wright Brothers in the video as Sonoma County Supervisor Mike McGuire and I cut the hose to a gasoline dispenser nozzle.” The symbolic hose is then proudly replaced by a very real electric charging station for airplanes, capable of providing a continuous 9,600 Watts to each of 12 aircraft and used to charge the Pipistrel G-4, e-Genius and Embry-Riddle’s hybrid Stemme during the contest. The video features great in-flight footage of the two pure-electric competitors from the GFC, and makes one wish for the day when private flight is quiet, pollution-free, and inexpensive. The G-4, according to Pipistrel CEO Ivo Boscarol, made the two 200-mile flights in the contest on about …
Want a Ride in Synergy?
Howard Handelman, a regular reader and observant critic of the CAFE Blog, and Patrick Panzera of Contact magazine fame, are soliciting support for an effort to help John McGinnis finish his Synergy aircraft, unfortunately unable to make its Green Flight Challenge date, but nearing the finish line, none the less. Kickstarter.com recently rejected John’s attempt to raise funds for the nearly complete aircraft, a radically new and somewhat controversial approach to obtaining high performance on relatively low power. John has shared his insights into the aerodynamics of the project and invited a lively discussion (now closed) on the Experimental Aircraft Association’s forums pages. Synergy under construction – an imposing sight The Internet has made possible fund-raising “crowd sourcing” in which interested people all over the world can contribute to enterprises they feel worthy of support. As Handelman explains, “Keep in mind that Gates, Jobs and Rutan started in the equivalent of their garages. Then remember the pre-internet crowd funding of …
Electravia Makes a Good Showing at Aero Expo
Anne Lavrand, founder and President of Electravia, continues to find ways to expand her company’s product offerings while offering well-integrated packages of reasonably-priced electric aircraft and components. At this year’s Aero Expo in Friedrichshafen, Germany, her firm displayed the fuselage of the Electrolight 2, a modified Fauconnet sailplane, fitted with a 30-hp Lynch-type motor, controller, and batteries. It is the least expensive electric motorglider on the market at only 30,000 Euros ($39,600), and allows powered flight for recharging costs of about 0.65 Euros per hour (86 cents). The motor, normally graced by one of Anne’s wooden e-Props, had a forward-folding “clap propeller” or “bec de canard” (literally, the beak of the duck), a variant on the light carbon fiber propellers that e-Props also produces. This should reduce drag and help improve the performance of the Fauconnet, a French version of the popular Scheibe L-Spatz, which Anne notes was flown by every young German learning to fly sailplanes a few years …
Quiet Planes Make Good Neighbors
With this year’s Electric Aircraft Symposium just a few days away, the next few blog entries will close out reviews of presentations from EAS V. Krish J. Ahuja, Regents Professor at the School of Aerospace Engineering and the head of the Aerospace and Acoustics Technology Division at Georgia Institute of Technology, talked on “Quiet Propulsion for Small Electric Aircraft.” Dr. Ahuja came with great credentials, including his 1993 AIAA Aeroacoustics Award and being listed as one of top 50 Innovators by Aerospace magazine, 1995 and one of top 50 Technology leaders in the US by Industry Week Magazine. He started by examining the sources of aircraft noise. Internal combustion engines (ICEs) are inherently noisy, but propellers add to that noise by their thickness, speed of rotation and the amount of loading they bear in producing thrust. Converting air from low to high pressure as it moves through the propeller’s blades generates noise. Most annoying, the rasping shriek that comes from …